Ralph Peters (80 page)

"
Don't screw around,
"
Taylor said.
"
Regard my transmission as a lawful order. Out.
"

Ryder continued to punch the control key, deleting line after line. But his mood of playful competence was long gone.

Meredith brought Kozlov in from the hallway. Taylor tossed the mike back to Parker.

"
Want me to cover the hallway again?
"
Parker asked.

Taylor considered this officer he had only recently gotten to know. They were all so brave, so fine. What a lucky, lucky country to have such men.

"
No,
"
Taylor said.
"
I want everybody to listen to me. Chief, you keep punching that keyboard with your ears open.
"
Taylor looked at the faces. Meredith, so handsome and bright. Kozlov, with his bad teeth and naive honesty. Parker, a little bulldog of a man. And Ryder. Time had begun to collapse for Taylor. Since he and Noburu had looked into each other's eyes. Ryder blurred into another young warrant officer, a boy hardly known, suffering in a wreck in the African grasslands. It was only a moment before that Taylor had raised his pistol, with ants chewing at his hand, to shoot a boy through the forehead. Then he had blinked his eyes and found himself here.

Ryder sat at the computer, while Taylor raised an invisible hand with an invisible pistol.

No. Never again.

Taylor settled his eyes back on Meredith. A tormented boy growing up late in the streets of a diseased city. An earnest lieutenant, standing stiffly before his commander's desk, while outside combat helicopters churned the night air above Los Angeles.

Manny was there too. And Lucky Dave. But they stood apart from Meredith and the rest of the men, forming a distinctly different group. Taylor knew to which group he belonged. He was overdue for membership.

"
Merry,
"
Taylor said,
"
you are now acting force commander. Your mission is to extricate the raiding force and get every ship and every man across the Turkish border. I'm staying.
"

"
No
,
"
Meredith said. The word of complaint had none of the pompous formality of duty perceived
but unfelt.
It was a cry.
"
No,
"
Meredith repeated.
"
Sir . . . you're too valuable.
I
can stay.
"

Taylor briefly closed his eyes and shook his head.
"
Goddamnit,
"
he said softly,
"
you're a soldier, Merry. And soldiers take orders.
"
Outside, the thumping and sputter of battle underlined each word.
"
There's no more time. And there's no point in all of us . . .
"

Meredith set his jaw. His facial expression had grown so serious it almost made Taylor laugh.
"
I'm staying with you,
"
Meredith said adamantly.
"
The others can go.
"
Taylor dropped a hand onto Ryder's shoulder, steadying himself. He could feel the young man trembling. But the warrant's fingers never stopped working the control key.

An enormous blast shook the building. The lights went out and the only illumination in the room was the cool colored glow off the computer monitors. Then the ceiling lights flickered back on.

No one had moved. The officers in the room simply looked at him. Taylor saw his last hopes for any decency in the affair's conclusion slipping away. And he could not bear it.

"
Please,
"
he said, offering them the strangest of words. He carefully chose his language to include them all. But his eyes remained on Meredith as he spoke.

"
Listen to me,
"
Taylor said.
"
You're all I have. I have nothing else. No children. No life. You're my children. Don't you understand that?
"
He stared hard at Meredith. He wanted to take the younger man in his arms, to protect him now and forever.
"
You're the only sons I'll ever have. And no man wants to watch his sons die.
"
Then he narrowed his focus.
"
Merry.
Please
. Get out of here. Take them all with you. For Manny and Lucky Dave.
"
Meredith opened his mouth. His lips formed the word,
"
No.
"
But he never spoke it.

The sounds of battle ruptured something in the building above their heads.

The tiny voice of the radio squawked, barely audible.

"
Where are you? Everybody's in the air. Your ship's exposed. Where are you?
"

"
Go now,
"
Taylor said.
"
It's time.
"

Hurriedly, Taylor reached down inside his tunic to an inner pocket. He drew out a worn cavalry guidon. The tiny flag unrolled from his fingertips. The cloth had grown very thin. The red flash was a faded pink, the white had gone yellow. The numbers were shriveled and bent like old men. He held it out to Meredith.

"
There's a woman,
"
Taylor said.
"
Back in Washington. You'll find her name and address in my gear.
"
He briefly broke eye contact.
"
It won't mean much to her. If anything at all. But I want her to have it.
"

Meredith accepted the rag, his fingers briefly grazing Taylor's with a last warmth.

"
Get out of here,
"
Taylor said. He could no longer look at any of them. He roughly pulled Ryder from his chair before the computer and took his place. He turned his back to them all.

They left. In a local silence. With the lulls and sudden eruptions of combat shaking the building above their heads. They moved slowly as they exited the room. Then Taylor could hear them running down the corridor, with Meredith shouting at them to
move, move, move.
Taylor smiled. Meredith sounded like a merciless old drill sergeant. Then Taylor lost the sound of them in the clamor of battle.

He pressed the code key. Again and again.

In a little while, he imagined that he heard the sound of an aircraft lifting off. The building trembled. But it might only have been from the increasingly frequent shell impacts.

Taylor chose to believe it was his M-100, taking Meredith and the others home.

The door opened behind his back.

Taylor did not sway. He continued to press the control key at the required cadence. Fighting to the last, as best he knew how.

"
Colonel Taylor, sir?
"

Taylor whipped around in shock and fury.

It was Kozlov. Cradling an automatic rifle. The staff officer looked awkward and uncomfortable with the killing tool.

"
I told you to go,
"
Taylor said coldly. He turned his
attention back to the computer, immeasurably relieved that he had not found Meredith standing in the doorway.

"
They're all gone,
"
Kozlov said.
"
I watched them take off. All of your men are safe.
"

"
I told you to go, goddamnit,
"
Taylor said.
"
You're a soldier. Soldiers obey orders.
"
He pressed the magic key again.

"
This is
my
fight,
"
Kozlov said to Taylor's back, his words competing with the racket of combat. There wasn't much time now. Not much time at all.
"
This is
my
country. It's more my fight than yours.
"

"
You're a fool,
"
Taylor said. But his voice was not so fierce. He wasn't sorry for this bit of company, after all. The selfishness never ends, he told himself.

"
And you, too, are a fool,
"
Kozlov said.
"
We are both fools. But sometimes ... I think it is better to be a fool.
"
I should say something kind, Taylor thought. Something decent. To reach out to the poor bastard. But he could not make the words. There was only the screen and the key and a lengthening shadow.

"
Anyway,
"
Kozlov said,
"
I will guard you. Perhaps
I
can make some extra minutes for us.
"

Taylor's finger punched the wonderful key again. And again. Hundreds more systems had been destroyed. It was impossible to keep count. Perhaps the Scramblers were already gone.

I am the destroyer, he said to himself, recalling the disembodied quote but not its source. Poetry? An Indian religious text? It was all the same.

I am the destroyer.

"
I am going to the hallway now,
"
Kozlov said. His voice was almost feminine in its sadness.
"
Goodbye to you, Colonel Taylor.
"

And that was the end. Kozlov never reached the corridor. He died in the doorway. A burst of automatic weapons fire sounded loud and close. The Russian made a single weak sound and dropped to the floor.

Taylor swiveled around in his chair. With one hand he reached for the deadly fruit hanging from his carrying harness. The other hand remained on the keyboard, tapping away in the acquired rhythm.

Kozlov lay on the floor, his face pointed away from Taylor's field of vision. Above the body, a wiry Japanese commando stood with his legs spread, weapon at the ready. He looked at Taylor, then at the computer. He shouted a
s
ingle word in Japanese.

Taylor drew the pin from the grenade without removing
i
t from his harness. In the seconds before it exploded, he
h
ad time to appreciate his opponent, who was young, lean-featured, and obviously well-trained. The commando stood helplessly in the doorway, frozen by the instability of the moment. Unable to fire, as long as Taylor sat framed by the precious computer. The commando had
t
he look of a healthy, magnificent animal. Ready to kill, but restrained by a higher authority. With his dark, hyberalert eyes and the feel of brutally conditioned muscles beneath the fabric of his uniform, he was a perfect example of what a soldier should be. Taylor pitied him, understanding him as well as any man could ever understand another.

Taylor felt wonderfully peaceful as he waited and waited for the grenade to do its work. He even smiled at the recognition that his opponent's face was, after all, identical to his own, and that it had always been his own face on the other end of the gun.

25

5 November 2020

"
We're not going to make it,
"
Krebs told
Meredith. The S-2 sat in Taylor's old seat in the cockpit, watching the frozen landscape scream by. The M-100 was following the terrain as closely as possible on its exfiltration route. And the terrain of Armenia was rugged and wild.

"
You can do it, Flapper,
"
Meredith said.
"
It's not much further.
"
And, in truth, it was not far. The Turkish border lay just beyond the next line of mountains.

"
Major,
"
the old warrant said,
"
you can kiss my ass and suck my dick, if it makes you feel good. But we ain't going to make it, I done my best. But the sonsofbitches put so many holes in us you could run the Mississippi River in one side of this ship and out the other. We're falling apart. And we're running on fumes. I can either put her down now, or we can just wait until we fall out of the sky.
"

They were so close. Each of the other M-l00s in the raiding force had sent the code word hours before to indicate that they had crossed the border into neutral airspace and safety. But the command ship had waited too long to lift off from the rooftop helipad. Its armored sides had been battered and pierced. Barely half an hour out of Baku, Krebs had found it necessary to put down in the hills so that he could try to carry out whatever immediate repairs were possible. With Meredith trying clumsily to help and the others standing guard with their popguns in the darkness, they had struggled to slap enough mechanical Band-aids on the ship to get her back into the air before dawn brought about their inevitable discovery by the enemy. With the first light sweeping over the barren hills, Krebs had miraculously managed to get the M-100 airborne again. It sounded like a sick old used car. But it flew. And they climbed up above the snow line into high Armenia.

Meredith stared obstinately forward, across the gray and white landscape, as though he could will the ailing machine to continue over these last critical miles. The broken earth beneath them was terra incognita. The situation in Armenia was so chaotic, with so many factions and occupation forces engaged in butchering each other, that a landing would bring completely unpredictable consequences. If the Islamic Union occupation forces got to them first, they would be shot out of hand. If the wrong partisans got them, their fate might be considerably worse.

"
Major,
"
Krebs cried in exasperation.
"
Look at the goddamned controls. We're fucked. I've got to land this baby.
Now
.
"

Meredith refused to look at the control panel. He stared at the line of white mountains that meant freedom. And life. They had to make it now. For Taylor. So that it would not end as a bad joke after all.

"
How far is it?
"
Meredith asked.

In response, the engines began to choke.

"
So much for the decision-making process,
"
Krebs said.

"
Mayday, mayday,
"
Meredith shouted, working the radio and intercom simultaneously.
"
Prepare for uncontrolled impact.
"

The engines were finished. Krebs struggled with the manual controls, trying to bully the autorotation system to perform at the top of his voice. But the threats didn't help. They were too low for the autorotation to fully activate, and before Meredith could call any further warnings or instructions to the men in the rear compartment, the M-100 began to slice its way through a stand of evergreen trees in a shallow valley.